August 2017: The Curioseum at Pataka

The Curioseum: Collected Stories of the Odd and Marvellous was  published by Te Papa Press in 2014 (go to the Books page to read about it). It’s a wonderful door for kids into looking at objects in a museum very imaginatively. Having edited it, I’ve always seen it as having great potential for all sorts of spin-off activities. So we – Margaret Tolland, Education Co-ordinator at Pataka Art and Museum in Porirua, and I – ran a writing workshop for kids and some of their parents. Everyone wrote a story that came from some strange or wonderful object in the Pataka collections. We’ve made our own little Curioseum out of these great stories! One of the special things about it was having kids and their parents writing alongside each other.